


Yackle the Oracle and the Four Travelers

by LaDonnaErrante



Series: Three Very Strange Haggadah Excerpts [3]
Category: The Wicked Years Series - Gregory Maguire, הגדה של פסח | Passover Haggada
Genre: Bad Puns, Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Gen, Grimmerie, Out of Oz, Seder, The Four Children, The grimmerie is a haggada, slightly cracky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 10:53:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1302232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaDonnaErrante/pseuds/LaDonnaErrante
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rain opens the Grimmerie on a spring evening. (set in Out of Oz, the final book in the series)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yackle the Oracle and the Four Travelers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Roga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roga/gifts).



It is a warm spring evening in the Vinkus. The days are beginning to get longer and though Rain has been playing outside most of the day, as the sun sets she tiptoes into the Chancel of the Ladyfish and removes the Grimmerie from its hiding place. The book opens for her, its long sleep occasionally interrupted by the thin, prying fingers of a young woman.

Most days, she cannot decipher the strange symbols that fill the Grimmerie’s pages, but today it  has chosen to show her an entire page she can read:

* * *

 

Of four travelers it is told, all who entered the Cloister of Saint Galinda and spoke to the Oracle Yackle: one wise, one wicked, one simple, and one who is too afraid even to ask a question.

 

[](http://tinypic.com?ref=ta3dif) **The Wise One,** what does he say? “What are the biologies and physiologies that separate the animal from the Animal and the Animal from the Human?” 

To this one you respond by detailing the creation of the Animals as it was related to you--the conspiracy between Lurlina and Kumbricia. He isn’t here for myths; he is looking for science, facts that will prove a case. He does not know that myth is just as powerful as science. In the end, it will be the return and demise of the Kumbric Witch that will restore the Rights of Animals. In spite of all his disbelief, he listens patiently, even down to the last detail of Kumbricia’s cloak and broom. 

 

**The Wicked One** , what does she say? “What is the point of all this? Why do you resist if the Wizard will always win in the end?”

You don’t know why she bothers asking you; you don’t spend your time in cellars and attics plotting against the Wizard. Though your existence itself is a plot against him. What can she know of that? You must blunt her sharp teeth. “I do what I must. Just as you will do what you must,” you tell her. Her path will become clear to her. It is clear to you already, has been since the day you sold her Ama that useless potion. But it doesn’t change the anger and betrayal in her voice. You wonder if she knows that she is giving up for good and that in the end, it will make her unredeemable.  

 

[ ](http://tinypic.com?ref=t9tjtg)

 

   

 **The Simple One,** what does she say? “Oh, what is this place, Toto? I don’t think we’re in Canzizz anymore”

And you shall say to her: “Now you are in the Land of Oz, where to you all things may seem bright and beautiful, plain as a gingham pinafore. Follow the Yellow Brick Road if you must, but don’t expect it to get you anywhere you’d actually want to go. All the conventional wisdom says you can’t go home again.”

 

 

**And for the One Who is Too Afraid to Ask:**

To the one who is too afraid to ask a question, you want to open up. You want to tell him that one day everything will be okay, that he needn’t be so afraid. You don’t. You refuse to lie to him or to yourself. It wouldn’t do him any good. You hope one day he grows strong enough to realize that his fear does not protect him. You hope he becomes brave enough to speak.

 

**Author's Note:**

> For those unfamiliar with this part of the haggadah: http://ohr.edu/805
> 
>  
> 
> Image Sources:  
> Doctor Dillamond: http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2013/241/f/d/dr_dillamond_by_youngmoons-d6k6vqe.jpg  
> Elphab Thropp: http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20131026210339/oz_/images/9/95/Douglas_smith_wicked_cover.jpg  
> Dorothy Gale: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRBlZFaKeFnxZKnBxPt8soCrGFUUgO77iOq9jNZz8NHsXyx4F5e  
> Brrrr: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/wiredscience/2010/09/4998899668_e68463c04e_b.jpg


End file.
